5. The Pacific Coast

This is the day Heather realised that she’d lost her i-pad.  Bags and the car were searched more than once, even in places too small for an i-pad to fit into – but it had gorn.  The last place she definitely had it was a café we’d had breakfast in where she used it.  I’m certain she left it there and one of the staff just kept it, because when not being used it was always carried in a zipped up back-pack.  When we phoned no one admitted seeing it although when we left, the staff had been on their way to clear our table and only one other table was occupied.  Heather, being more generous than me thinks it fell out somewhere but has no idea how this happens with a zipped bag.  Anyway we are -1 i-pad.

Having no interest in Los Angeles we hit the coast just north of it at Ventura, heading towards Santa Barbara for the night.  There are lots of places now which are familiar from song titles.  American towns seem to lend themselves to it more easily, you just can’t imagine hit songs about Barnsley or Worksop somehow.  Anyway Santa Barbara turns out to be a delightful place with a pier that we drove out onto for about 400 yards.  It is a really nice place with an interesting shopping area and plenty of restaurants. 

The coast to the north has a large wild and scenic, undefined area called Big Sur and we plan to follow it all the way up Highway1, the same one we took going north from San Fran nearly a month ago. There’s about a hundred mile stretch with nothing much on it and to begin with we go slowly at this end in order to include what seems to be on everyone’s list, a trip to Hearst Castle.

Missing a turn onto Highway 1 we head straight for the sea and end up in a huge area of fantastic sand dunes.  A welcome stop and a chance for a walk with sand between our toes.  This is the area where Cecil B deMille (they don’t make names like that anymore) filmed his epic 1923 Ten Commandments.  After filming and to save money old Cec didn’t dismantle the sets, he just had them covered in sand, so littering on a grand scale.  The exact location was unknown which surprised us until we saw the extent of the dunes but archaeologists and film buffs have now started to uncover bits and pieces of the sets.  A sphinx here, a pyramid there.  Goodness knows what’ll happen if they turn up 11 commandments.

Wildlife bit here.   Monarch butterflies are big, orange and black and particularly impressive, especially in their migrations.  I’d known about the mass migration from as far as the Canadian border southwards to a few woods in Mexico where millions of Monarchs festoon the trees before setting off back north again.  As if that isn’t impressive enough the journey isn’t undertaken by one generation of butterflies, several generations are necessary to make the whole trip.  I didn’t know that they were the Monarchs to the east of the Rockies and that the western Monarchs (obviously an idle breed) over-winter in California.   This is what we see 50 miles or so north of Santa Barbara.  Not millions certainly but hundreds of Monarchs in a tiny grove of eucalyptus (not a native tree so also interesting).  They’ve been coming only since 1990 and numbers have been plummeting since the mid nineties.  A wonderful sight though.  Strangely the place wasn’t all full of birds having US sized portions of fresh butterfly buffet.

The aforementioned Hearst Castle is the huge house that William Randolph Hearst, the media tycoon from the first half of the 20th century built.  He spent a fortune bringing antiques from everywhere he could to fill it and to become part of the fabric of the building.  These range from 3,000 year old Egyptian statues to Spanish church doors, carved pews and stonework.  I’m sure it was all bought legitimately from the proper authorities paying the proper price.  The house (he never called it a castle) sits on a hilltop overlooking the ocean but high enough to be above much of the regular sea mists.  I was ready to be revolted by the display of bad taste excess and the proof that money doesn’t necessarily buy good taste but of course this was pre-bling days and everything antique was pre 1800.  It was excessive of course but not wildly different from a big National Trust property housing ancient artefacts looted (sorry, purchased or liberated) by generations of one family.  It felt somewhat odd as if there was no coherence to the place and we realised that it was because of all the churchy bits incorporated into the building.  For instance, the dining room walls are lined with choir stalls and there are church windows and doors built in.  The house is in a magnificent position and well worth a visit, lying 5 miles up a private road from the pacific coast road.  Here are a few facts to give you some idea of this man’s wealth.  His father made an enormous fortune in silver and other mining activities and on his death left the money to Randy’s mother who paid him a monthly allowance of $10,000 from sometime in the 1890’s.  The family estate covered 390 square miles along the pacific coastline and he had 6 homes as well as Hearst Castle.  Hearst himself built his own fortune on newspapers and radio stations.  Patty Hearst is his granddaughter. 

There seem to be more and more people with those expandable poles with their mobile phones on so they can take even more selfies. Egosticks.

After that, something completely different.  Just up the coast we heard that Elephants Seals were to be seen on a beach.  Expecting half a dozen or so we were taken aback by what must have been 300 – 400 of them honking (that’s honking, noise and honking, smell) away, lying in the sun and occasionally flicking sand over themselves.  For those of you who don’t know and may be even vaguely interested such a gathering is called a rookery. These were all juveniles or females which grow to 10 feet long and 2000 pounds whereas the bulls get to 16 feet and 5400 pounds.  Is everything big here: trees, seals, portions of food (excluding pints).

Heather, being i-pod less has to use her phone as an alarm because we want a reasonably early start for our day driving Big Sur.  With a phone on English time the alarm goes off at 11.00pm and I’m up but fortunately realise before I actually get in the shower.  So far we’ve had 24 days of sunshine, even the sea mist on our first drive north was below us so we’re looking forward to The Big Sur.  I think you’re probably ahead of me now.  The day dawns with sunshine but by the time we set out it’s low cloud and rain with swirling mist. Oh bugger !

At one point we see a couple of people way below us on a hazy beach carrying what looks like a surfboard, so they’re either the first surfers we’ve seen or a couple off for some Extreme Ironing.  Even like this the drive is spectacular, and the swirling mist makes it very dramatic and monochrome but about halfway it begins to clear and we finish the ride in sunshine.  The sea is an intense deep blue, the sky a few shades lighter and all set against a rocky coastline with a road threading itself along as a two-lane blacktop.  Every now and again we’d met a rock in the road which had bounced down the hillside and required a little steering adjustment.  We avoided them all.